


A Better Company

by musamihi



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: First Meetings, M/M, Mistaken Identity, Pre-Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Semi-Public Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-20
Updated: 2016-11-20
Packaged: 2018-08-30 17:54:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,246
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8543188
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/musamihi/pseuds/musamihi
Summary: Several years before the events of The Force Awakens, a young New Republic pilot takes a little planetary leave after a disciplinary hearing on Hosnian Prime.  The cold, rather unfriendly stranger he meets in a bar might not be the best company, but that's who he's got - and, really, how bad can he be?





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Mossy_Bench](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mossy_Bench/gifts).



There were places in Republic City meant for men like him - big, utilitarian halls full of clashing voices and chairs shoved askew, served entirely by droids who never kept you waiting, but seemed to collect the mountainous litter of empty glasses only once or twice a week; there were warm, affectionate little holes in the wall with decor trying so hard to approximate _home_ for as broad a swath of the New Republic's vast fleet of unmoored men and women as possible that the result was a sort of thin and formless chumminess. _Welcome back, young sir and/or madam! You look cold and/or tired, please enjoy one of our rotating combinations of carbohydrates, fat, and salt, just like mother, sire, and/or nestqueen used to make it!_ The immense and constant influx of bodies in naval uniforms, whether on planetary leave with nowhere better to go, or reporting for new orders, or tending to one of a thousand pieces of administrative business, demanded a network of amenities designed to imitate either the bare-bones chaos of the fleet's troop transports, or the distant charms of home. Half this city was _built_ for him.

And Poe liked it - sometimes. But it was rare, really, that he was in much of a mood to go where he was supposed to.

The other half of the city, with its broad, bright avenues, its demure glass exteriors, its quietly expensive tableaus done out in impossibly fine detail, seemed always to be edging a good-natured elbow into his back and ushering him away. People smiled at him here, of course, or thanked him for his service, or made wistful remarks about adventure; but it was always delivered with the air of a brush-off. There was a sense among Poe's peers that this other, upper half of the city was _safe_ , antiseptic, boring, not worthy of people who were brave enough to venture into the underworlds of the Galaxy, people who were too street-wise and savvy to be conned into paying that much for a drink, people who knew things no one else knew, people - people, obviously, like _them_ \- who could tell you about a little place they had discovered, if only you had the guts and swagger to go there. It was an attitude eagerly encouraged by the denizens of the sunnier side of things. _Oh, yes,_ they seemed to say, ever so politely: _you're far too smart for us. You'll be much happier down in the mud with the other animals. How we wish we could follow! If only we were as dauntless as you!_

Unfortunately, a keen desire to fly in the face of convention didn't pay the tab. Poe could not, in fact, afford to drink in the lavishly reserved sections of the capitol. But in this, as in most other things, he was unafraid to call on his fellow man for assistance. He didn't march into these places looking for a mark, or ready to turn his smile up to the volume required to coax a few credits out of someone's pocket - but usually, by the end of the night, he found everything fell into place. His faith in the universe had never once been punished.

One chilly night, absolutely determined to be relieved and resolutely upbeat after a successful end to a disciplinary hearing (a slap on the wrist - an annotation in his file that he planned to wear like a badge, thank you very much - and cleared to return to duty in twenty-four hours), he found himself wandering along one of the glittering strands of the web that was the city's political district. The roads lay out in perfect, beautiful sightlines between monuments placed just so, memorials looming in the distance, facades of grand institutions dawning around every corner; hotels and shops and restaurants with shimmering shielded patios filled in the rest. Poe, in his civilian clothes, a faded green coat and a pair of brand new working boots, was distinctly underdressed among his fellow pedestrians - never mind the diners and patrons behind all the broad, impeccable windows. He took a perverse sort of pleasure in striding through the doors of one of the more rarified hotels, notable meeting place of Senators, diplomats, and all their monied hangers on. Its bar, prominently placed on the first floor, looking out over a rare patch of ground-level greenery, was precisely the sort of place no enlistedman would dream of going to celebrate his victory over the brass.

Poe walked in, past the host (who was wearing what could generously be described as a minimally welcoming grimace) and sat himself at the long, natural stone bar, a ten-ton luxury in and of itself. Like so many places here, this one dealt in _space_ to make itself opulent - though by its bare number of occupants it might have been considered crowded, it had an easy, airy feel. When Poe slung his coat over the back of his chair and dropped his elbows on the bar, the nearest patron was two seats away.

The bartender (a flesh and blood affair - expensive - Keshian, he thought) strode smartly over, and it was always difficult to tell whether he was about to be served or offered a helpful suggestion for somewhere else to be, so Poe liked to get a jump on things. " _That_ looks great," he said, before the bartender had a chance to get a word out, pointing at the tall, gently fizzing glass before the man sitting nearest him - who shot him a perturbed little glance, as though he'd really rather not have been involved. "Whatever he's having."

The bartender looked at him, blank (but with just a shade of _unimpressed_ ); finally nodded; and walked away to a station a few paces to the side. 

Poe settled back into his chair, making himself comfortable enough to wait out the next - oh, two or three hours, he hoped. "So?" he asked, turning to his neighbor. "What am I drinking?"

He was a pinched, pale, unfriendly looking thing, straight-backed but with his elbows drawn in so close together they gave him a hunched and defensive aspect. He turned the same look on Poe as had the bartender, but with a little more ice. "Trelberry juice."

 _Trelberry juice._ "Shit." Yes, now that he looked at it - now that he could smell it, as the bartender was setting an identical glass in front of him with a smirk just playing at the corner of his mouth, it was easy to identify the tart, sweet, slightly effervescent stuff he'd had for a not-infrequent treat throughout his childhood. No doubt this was better than the reconstituted version he'd grown up with, but … not _enough_ better. "Thanks," he said to the bartender, snatching the garnish off the side of the glass and popping it in his mouth. "Thanks a lot. How about an Idelwil, too."

"Of _course,_ sir."

And so, here he was - one drink for the price of two. Great start to the night. He drank his juice in one go, memories of pouring it down his throat in the muggy, punishing Yavin IV afternoons offering a little consolation for the no doubt impressive pricetag, and he nudged the glass away from himself. The pale, dry, astringent liquor the bartender soon left in its place was much more his speed. He sipped at it for a while, trying to loosen himself back into the tranquil atmosphere of the place, the expansive feeling it offered - a feeling he'd soon enough have to take back with him to a bunk about a half centimeter wider than his shoulders.

His neighbor, he realized, kept glancing toward the door. "Waiting for someone?" Poe asked, never satisfied with long with a lull in conversation.

It was clear his approach was perplexing - the man looked at him as though he were a piece of furniture who'd grown arms and insulted his mother. "Yes," he replied, smooth and acerbic. "Better company."

Poe huffed into his glass - and smiled. "You're not from around here, are you? It's not that kind of hotel."

The man rolled his eyes, and sipped at his glass of juice like it was something either very precious or unbearably medicinal. He barely seemed to let it touch his tongue before the glass found the bar again. He _wasn't_ from around here, Poe would wager - of course, almost no one was, no one who would turn up at this spot. The moneyed political set that frequented places like these was no less transient than their rowdier military counterparts down the road. They stayed a little longer, and made domiciles of a sort in the gleaming apartments towering in the vicinity of the centers of the New Republic's administration. But they all had other homes - in the end, they all went other places. This man was a visitor (some kind of number cruncher, judging by his _exhilarating_ demeanor, and from somewhere pretty dour, if juice was his idea of a good time), but in that, he was in good company.

And Poe liked good company - of all stripes. He had a nose for it; he could find it anywhere. Sometimes it took a little digging, but where else did he have to be? He had his fortunes sunk in this place for the duration, now - this guy was going to have to be good enough. Most people were, if you gave them the chance.

"I used to love that stuff," he said, gesturing with his glass. "When I was a kid. We just got it in big blocks of powder, though. Nothing fresh. Trelberry would boil right in the ground, where I'm from. You couldn't grow it."

This earned him little more than another sidelong glance - as though they'd been on a train together, and someone was hoping that if they simply ignored him, he'd stop talking. _Well, good luck with that._ Poe might have been cleared of wrongdoing, but he wasn't going back to his previous assignment, when he was finished here. No, it was on to somewhere new, leaving more friends in his wake than he liked. It made him lonely; it made him talkative.

" _You_ used to love it too, didn't you," he continued, undeterred by the fact that he had to supply both halves of the back-and-forth. "I'm betting. What are you - Central Revenue? Commerce? Finance? And they've got you stationed somewhere way, _way_ out, don't they, on some half-terraformed backwater where the food comes twice a year, but you're here now. On business. Right? And you figured - hell, you were going to have some of the _good_ stuff."

The irritation only seemed to cloud thicker over the man's broad forehead; his short-clipped reddish hair was smoothed back from it in what seemed to be a pretty half-hearted attempt at fashion. "Are you quite finished?"

Poe grinned. "I could go all night."

The man seemed to take him at his word - he planted his hand down on the bar and started to slide back in his chair, clearly intending to move elsewhere. Poe leaned in, all but sliding into the next seat. "Hey - come on," he said, conciliatory, giving his best soothing smile of apology. "Seriously. Just - stay a while, huh? Til your friend comes." He was very obviously waiting for someone, between his glances at his chrono and the door. "Then I'll leave you alone. Listen. Who else am I going to talk to, here?" He waved discreetly at the clusters of people to either side of them, populating the tables and booths throughout the rest of the cavernous space. They were, to a one, polished political types, people who could have been planted props in any of Republic City's swanker areas. "These guys? Look at them." Poe wasn't looking at them; Poe was looking at the man vacillating on the edge of his chair, a man very much out of place, a man with clothes and a haircut that managed somehow to look about ten years out of time - quaintly harsh, like a fresh-faced, pink-scrubbed cadet someone had tried to shove forward into a swaggering, debonair future that hadn't yet quite materialized. He didn't belong here. Not any more than Poe did. "I don't want to talk to them. They're not like us - not like you and me. I mean." He raised one hand a little, only half-joking. "No offense."

Something about that seemed to arrest this man's attention, because he settled again on his stool, his wry (and still, yes, somewhat needled) gaze resting on Poe's face. They didn't fit in, so they might as well not fit in together - that was all Poe had meant. And he was pleased to see his new companion didn't seem to have reared back at the implication that he might not be blending seamlessly with the Republic City's upper crust.

"No," he said, at length, even sounding a little pleased. "No, I'm afraid they're not very like me." 

"There you go." Poe's grin spread out, broad and relieved. "So. Trelberry juice. Am I wrong?"

Another eyeroll; but this one was less exasperated, possibly a bit more resigned. "No. I did enjoy it. As a boy." His speech had a brusque cadence to it that Poe wasn't sure had anything to do with irritation, on closer examination; it was possible that was just _him_. "I've since been stationed somewhere it's very difficult to get it."

"And now," Poe said, sweeping his arm to indicate their surroundings, "here you are."

"Here I am." No affection, there, no awe or nostalgia - just the creeping fatigue of a man who was very far from home. He drank again, another cut-short taste. It seemed to Poe less like he was savoring it than begrudging himself the pleasure.

As to precisely where his new friend was stationed, all Poe could get out of him was _the Outer Rim_ \- and as he, for once, didn't feel much like discussing his own work, he didn't press for details. He gravitated toward little anecdotes about his own childhood, stories that didn't touch on his training, on his friends made at the academy, on his steadily climbing career that nonetheless occasionally took a sharp turn and found him starting over, loved ones somewhere back in his exhaust. He didn't speculate about this man's future with - Finance, or Revenue, or Commerce, or whatever boring-but-classified business he was in, and he didn't brag about his own, a bright climb to an inevitable promotion that was, at the moment, feeling pretty solitary. No, it was just pleasant vagaries, little nostalgias that seemed to put his neighbor in what was at least a slightly more pleasant mood - the _past_ being, apparently, a kinder home for him - and, after warming into something like a casual chat, even two rounds of drinks that hadn't been squeezed out of a fruit. That a badly-dressed paper-pusher from the Outer Rim probably wasn't going to be able to foot this bill hadn't quite occurred to him, yet - he didn't care at all.

And when he found himself leaning a little too close, one knee resting on the chair between them, his fingers drumming continually and creeping ever closer to the white-knuckled hand curled around the stem of a wine glass like it was some kind of cudgel or unfamiliar instrument - well, he knew this wasn't his best move. He knew he was only acting out of desperation. He knew his loneliness was getting the better of him, that the veneer of bravado he'd worn into his hearing was thinning away to reveal the very real fear and anguish that had lain under it all along: that he might have to leave all of this behind. It was stupid. Everything was fine; everything had gone his way. He didn't have to let himself get so worked up that this was how he blew off the inevitable steam, petting provincial civil servants in Republic City go-to spots. He should have sat back, absorbed the painful blow of this astronomical bill, and gone to sleep it all off.

Instead, he asked, drawing neat little constellations in the condensation gathered on the bar between them: "So, what else don't you have, in the Outer Rim?"

Provincial he might have been; an idiot, he was not. The man gave him another sharp, distrustful look - funny how quickly that could cut through booze - which softened only slowly, into something like cautious optimism. Not exactly burning enthusiasm, not exactly a purring, pleasured invitation -

"Plenty," he said, and his foot knocked too heavily into the side of Poe's boot under the bar.

It took him a moment to realize that was a come-on, and a not a rebuke. He grinned. "Yeah?"

The man set his glass down, touched his napkin to his mouth, and slid out of his chair. "I'll be right back," he said, without inflection and loud enough for the bartender to hear, before disappearing in the direction of the refreshers.

 _Oh, hells yes._ Poe tried to hide the fact that he was smiling like a complete moron behind his rather too delicate glass; he failed. When he, too, raised his arm to wave at the bartender that he wasn't leaving - he'd be right back - not to charge him and toss the rest of his wine - it didn't take a Keshian to see _right_ through him. The bartender glared after him as he left, with the face of a man who had long ago stopped being amused at people's dead clumsy attempts to be clever.

Poe was fresh out of his always dangerously low supply of shame, in any case. He slipped through the door of the refresher, an ornate affair, as was to be expected here - all mirrors and thick-veined stone, individual alcoves shielded with heavy doors. They were all open. A shadow spilled out of one of them onto the floor. 

He made it about to the threshold before his friend's hands shot out and grabbed him by the shirtfront, and hauled him inside with all the patience of an underfed rancor. The door slid tranquilly shut behind them, and locked. Poe hardly noticed; by the time he was finished tripping into the long, lean, faintly trembling body in front of him, the two of them were wedged up into a mirrored corner beside a little sink, mouths locked, eyes shut. Poe's boots squeaked on the polished floor; his hand left a fleeting outline in vapor on one of the endless mirrors.

"Hello," he breathed, trying to pull away long enough to get a good look at his night's entertainment, who was suddenly delightfully pink in the face, and surprisingly, _wonderfully_ ravenous -

"Don't talk," the man bit out, his hands sinking at once to Poe's belt.

Poe laughed. "Aye aye," he said, turning his gaze down to the quick work this man was making of his trousers - and absolutely not wanting to do anything that might interrupt. He twisted his fist into the man's shirt where it dipped below his waistband, and pulled. "Yes _sir_ -"

"I _said_ shut up." Long, tense fingers sank into his hair like it was a hopeless mess of cable he couldn't quite see how to set right again. "You talk too much."

Well, that was hardly the first time Poe had heard that complaint; and so he obliged, keeping his silence (aside from a few appreciative sighs and the odd irrepressible growl) as they kissed, tilting into one another in the cramped, dimly-lit confines of this little room, as he let himself feel the shape of this man's narrow waist and hips under his poorly-fitted clothes, as he listened to some of the most most desperate, poorly restrained moans of pleasure he thought he had ever heard and of something _angry_ as he sucked at the stark white skin papering over this man's throat. Poe's trousers fell to his ankles, finally, where they piled around his boots - and a hand curled around his stiffening cock, drawing a breathy little laugh.

"There you go," he murmured against the man's neck, breaking his promise, but - just barely. He was grinning, his voice low, pleased, intimate and easy. "You gonna be nice to me? I just finished up a mission off in the Braxant Sector - _very_ dangerous - wasn't sure I'd be coming home -"

The man reared back - as much as he could, in these confined quarters, with his hand in Poe's pants. His breathing was heavy, his face flushed, his eyes narrowed with something between anger and real, exasperated distress. "Will you _please_ ," he hissed, "just -"

"Sorry, sorry," Poe muttered, soothing, trying to close the distance between them again, to speak those words into the patch of shoulder he'd just uncovered. For a moment, it seemed to work. "Most people _like_ a flyboy - believe it or not. Plenty of people want to say thank you - you know, for my selfless, fearless service to the cause of Galactic freedom and justice - hey." The man had gone still; his grip was suddenly stiff and almost prim. Poe tipped his head up to him. "What?"

The man was - well, he wasn't quite smiling. It was an ironic expression, devoid of pleasure; a tight, unhappy wince with a curl of his lip that was far closer to disdain than to amusement. "You're in the navy," he said, flat - and gave a dry bark of a laugh that, for being light and quick as it was, Poe found he didn't like _at all_.

"Of course I'm in the navy." He looked down at himself; back up at the bewildering face above him. "What the hell else do you think _I'm_ doing here?" He really wasn't from around here, was he.

The warmth of the other man's hands and body disappeared at once; he stepped back completely, clothes all askew, his arms stretched out to either side of him. He bent, as though Poe were far enough beneath him that he had to physically stoop, and enunciated more priggishly than Poe had thought possible: "Fuck off. I wouldn't screw you with another man's cock. I wouldn't get you off for all the -" his imagination seemed to fail him, here, and he almost stammered - "for every last credit in the Galaxy. Get out."

Poe's face was red with anger - and, it was true, an incredible wave of confusion. "What? What - what's _your_ problem?"

"You can't even imagine, can you." He was furiously stuffing his shirt back into his pants, his hair falling heavy, greasy and ungainly, into his eyes. "Why someone might not want to drop to his knees for the glorious fighting forces of the New Republic." The words fell out of his mouth like poison; hot, hateful, spitting. "Just like you went swooping into the Rimcee system, blasting away the first chance they'd had at peace in twenty years, because why would they want _peace_ , why, when they could just keep fighting for you, what a _privilege_ , how they must treasure -"

"How do you," Poe said, suddenly cold, and almost calm, and trying to focus on the chill creeping up his neck instead of the one brushing by his bare knees, "know anything about what happened in the Rimcee system?" That had been his last mission - the Braxant sector - concluded not four days ago, and in no way yet a part of the public record. 

"It's such a mystery, isn't it," the man sneered at him, letting his eyes drop to the tangle of Poe's trousers on the floor. "You're all so very _discreet._ "

" _Answer_ me."

He gave a dismissive wave - too broad, too heated, and it brought a decorative jar crashing from a shelf onto the floor. "It's not a crime to be informed. And - believe it or not - it's not treason to fail to salivate over every single step the New Republic takes toward ensuring the Galaxy's riddled with enough weak spots that it can sink its tendrils of corruption in wherever it likes." He slammed his hand down on a panel on the wall; the door slid open with an absurdly cheery chime. "Go find someone else to talk to. I think you're in excellent company out there, actually. You're all of a stripe." He didn't wait to give Poe time to leave, however; he marched out himself, just about fully dressed, having missed only one button on his shirt.

The outer door slammed to. For a moment, Poe stood there, reeling, staring into one of his infinite reflections that bounced back and forth in front of and behind him between the room's warring mirrors - disheveled, his hair sticking up, his shirt hanging half off him and his shorts dragged down over one hip. It was only when he bent to haul his pants up that he saw the tiny fragments of glass that were all that was left of that fallen jar - they were everywhere, scattered to each corner of the room and into his clothes, in a chaos of jagged edges. The man had crushed a footprint into them, once, just beside the door; Poe left his own, as he finally stepped awkwardly out into the main room. 

He wondered, for a moment, if he ought to tell someone. But he would have enough to explain to the bartender, he figured, without adding this to his list of demerits. And so he left, the light switching off automatically as he exited, and that smashed and splintered mess glinted once - and then fell into darkness behind him, to wait.


End file.
